Cuba in 7 days: Havana, Viñales and Trinidad

Cuba is the only trip I have taken where the practical preparation mattered more than the itinerary. Not because it is difficult - it is not - but because the assumptions you carry from everywhere else do not apply. Your card may not work. Your phone may not either. The restaurant with the menu outside may have two of the eight things on it.

Seven days, three places, and I would not have shortened any of them.

The route

• Days 1–3: Havana
• Days 4–5: Viñales
• Days 6–7: Trinidad, then back

Days 1–3: Havana

Day 1. Landed, changed money, and walked. I stayed in a casa particular in Centro Habana rather than a hotel - a room in a family home, licensed, with breakfast on the roof. It cost less than a hotel and it is the single decision that shaped the trip, because the family answered every question I had for a week.

Day 2. Habana Vieja on foot: the four plazas, the Malecón at the end of the afternoon. At six in the evening the whole city seems to be walking along the sea wall in the same direction. Somebody was playing dominoes on the pavement, somebody was fixing a car, somebody was singing, and all three had been doing it before I arrived and continued after I left.

Day 3. Centro and Vedado, which is where people actually live. I got a haircut, ate at a family-run paladar, and spent an hour with a mechanic who had made a part for a 1955 Chevrolet out of a Russian tractor component. He showed it to me the way other people show photographs of their children.

The classic cars are not nostalgia, incidentally. A 1959 import ban froze the fleet and mechanics have kept them running with improvised parts ever since.

Days 4–5: Viñales

Day 4. Shared taxi west, about three and a half hours. Viñales is a green valley of tobacco fields and limestone mogotes, and it is agricultural rather than touristic once you walk five minutes out of the village.

Day 5. On horseback through the valley with a farmer, stopping at a tobacco drying house where he explained the process and rolled a cigar in about ninety seconds. Then the caves, then a sunset that turns the mogotes black against orange. This was the best day of the week.

Days 6–7: Trinidad

Day 6. The long transfer - Viñales to Trinidad is most of a day, roughly eight hours by shared taxi via Havana. I would do it again but I would leave at six in the morning rather than nine.

Trinidad is a colonial town of pastel houses and cobbles so uneven they are genuinely difficult to walk on. In the evening, the Casa de la Música on the steps by the main square: live son, no cover charge worth mentioning, and half the audience is local.

Day 7. Morning at Playa Ancón, twenty minutes away, then the transfer back to Havana for the flight.

The practical things that actually matter

Money. Bring cash, in euros. Cards issued by American banks do not work at all, and other foreign cards are unreliable - assume they will fail and be pleasantly surprised if they do not. Work out your budget before you go and add a margin, because there is no fallback. Change at official casas de cambio or your accommodation; the street rate is a scam risk and the situation changes constantly.

Internet. Wifi is bought as a scratch card and used in specific hotspots. It works but it is slow and public. I stopped trying after day two and it improved the trip.

Transport. The tourist coach exists and is comfortable. The colectivo - a shared taxi you arrange through your casa the night before - is faster, similar money, and you spend four hours in a car with four Cubans, which is worth more than the air conditioning.

Accommodation. Casas particulares are the best value and the best experience. Your host will book the next one for you in the next town by phone. This chain works and it is how everyone travels.

Food. Manage expectations. State restaurants are indifferent; private paladares are much better. Ask your casa where they eat, not where they recommend.

Bring with you: any medication you might need, sun cream, and a torch. Shortages are real and unpredictable.

What I would change

1. Nine days instead of seven. The Viñales–Trinidad transfer eats a day and I felt it.
2. More cash. I was fine, but only just, and there is no cash machine to fall back on.
3. Learn more Spanish. English is much less widely spoken than in most of Latin America, and the difference between forty words and four hundred would have been large.